Upgrading, 7950 best option?

[Hicks12]

Right so I have been keeping this gtx460 for ages now and I see that sea islands is delayed till the end of this year and I assume Nvidia is in a similar boat, and I cannot really see SI being all that different as its small changes overall. So I believe I have decided on upgrading now unless someone can tell me I am wrong and should wait? If not then I shall continue....

I have set me eye on a 7950 as I dislike Nvidia and their whole practice (both mobile and desktop) and some research shows that AMD really is providing solid performance . Ideally I would like to spend as little as possible, the XFX 7950 (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-x...i-dvi-hdmi-mdp) is the cheapest I have found at £215 and comes with 2 games. I do have watercooling and I am in the process of deciding whether or not to keep it, have a universal gpu block so can use it on any gpu , so basically two cards I am looking at which is 1 that is cheap as chips but with good overclocking (useless cooler but good chip) and the other one that is all round great which I assume would be one of these : Gigabyte Windforce 3X Radeon HD 7950 @ £139

I am at the moment siding with just keeping my watercooling gear as it will keep costs down hopefully!. The other option is actually buying a much cheaper card say the 7850 as I found one here http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-m...rossfire-offer and its only £128, I am about to buy tomb raider and the cheapest I have found it is £21 so take that away and its only £107 . Going by anandtech its a solid performer however I am losing faith in their benchmark chart as it says a gtx460 should be averaging 40fps on bf3 at ultra 1920x1200 res with fxAA high, I however never get this... I have to play on medium setting @1080p with no AA to get it over 40.

Is the 7850 really much of a jump? I have tried to look at hexus benchmarks but it seems they are all over the place with old drivers or they test a relatively new card and the 7870 with a handful of games (no bf3!). Should I just jump on a 7950? After writing this I am already thinking the 7950 is where it is at, the 7870 LE style (£175 at ebuyer) seems good but the power usage is so high, being slightly cautious of power usage it seems silly that a 7950 uses less than that card.


TLR I cant decide on a card, is the 7950 the best? If so what card is cheapest that can overclock, I will most likely use my watercooling so cheap as chips!. Main games are Battlefield 3, ArmA2 (soon to be 3) atm but basically high intensive games and I play at 1080p.

[Bonebreaker777]

...Gigabyte Windforce 3X Radeon HD 7950 @ £139...

I think this was meant to be £239

Best card for OC? Usually it depends on the individual card. And the quality of the manufacturer. Would say a extra 50Mhz would not be worth the extra £20-30. The best performance-price ratio is usually with the cheapest or second cheapest cards. I would try to read about the individual cards available at your retailer, the memory chips used for them and the power cascade present. Recently I purchased a dirt cheap 7850 XFX (£123) and overclocked on pure air 100Mhz both core and memory. That was it without any voltage increase. Couldn't get more, at higher frequencies Furmark started to froze or produce artefacts. In a well ventilated case. With stock cooling from XFX.

How much OC you are looking at?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Another option is the HD7870LE:

http://www.ebuyer.com/432444-powerco...2gbd5-2dhppv3e

[kompukare]

If BF3 is your yardstick then the various techpowerup reviews are very useful as W1zzard always uses BF3 for the overclocked results:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/?...=25&order=date

Now, there are various results depending on which drivers were used but they way W1zzard does it is to list the results each card got versus that card at stock. So if you look at an old review with old drivers and it says the card overclocked by 22% and the performance gain was 20% then you sort of guess how a similar card should perform with current drivers.

For example, TPU haven't reviewed any 7850s for a while, but you can sort of take the results from their last review:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/C...lQueen/31.html
where the stock 7850 is listed as getting 40.5 FPS in BF3 @ 1200P and note that their OC got them up to 51.7FPS (+28%) and then contrast it with their most recent review which included stock 7850 results:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/E..._Ti_SSC/9.html
and note that the stock 7850 now gets 43.3FPS (+7%). Taken together an overclocked 1GB 7850 should be able to get 55FPS.

Other sites do good reviews too but it's hard to compare overclocked results.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Here is a review of the HD7870LE:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/V...7870_XT_Black/

The VTX and Powercolor cards are the same AFAIK.

[Hicks12]

Thanks for all the quick and informative responses! I admit the 7870 LE seems ok and I did say to my friend to get one as he couldnt afford the 7950 however power consumption for him was no issue, these cards are a step up from my 460 and going by tech powerup the difference in power between the LE and the 7950 is rather large, the LE would cost me £30 more to run! Considering that the 7950 is only £30 more I would be right in thinking this is the best option?.

The 7850 is out as I didnt realise it was the 1gb version, the vram is one of the issues for my 460 as bf destroys that 1gb so 2gb minimum! I am pretty much eyeing the 7950 XFX on price alone now, do we expect any price cuts soon? I have heard AMD are being quite firm that they have the market so to me it seems unlikely to change soon.

I probably wont be overclocking much till I need it, much like my cpu I run at 4ghz but I have had it running at 5.3ghz and if I find its getting slow then I will bump it up to the max again , same here as soon as I dont get near 60fps in games I will overclock it. I intend to have this gpu for atleast 2 years since I have had the gtx460 for almost 3 years!

[kalniel]

AMD have just finished a whole lot of price cutting - the cards are a bargain now compared to their original prices. But prices always fall over time so depends how patient you are.

[Gilderien]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/548?vs=550

Some benchmark comparisons between the 7950 and the 7870. Considering the price difference, I'd personally say that the improvement in performance is insignificant.

[dacads]

As an owner of 7870LE I can vouch for its performance, with an OC it easily matches and even beats the 7950

[ZaO]

Avoid those XFX Double Dissipation cards. It's a terrible design that causes the VRM's to get way to hot. I had one of them for a little while (7970 or 7990, I forget). If you search it you will see a lot written about it. Just wanted to warn you man!